EFi-X USA to sell pre-made PCs as do-it-yourself Mac clones

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for these dolts to just bang their head against any freely available wall than to try and tangle with a company with a $20B war chest? I seriously doubt people who were going to spring for a $2300 low end Pro will drop to $2000 for something untested that will have zero support. (EFI-X-USA won't support MacOS and Apple won't support running it on their box). Not much of a pro solution. I have a few legal clones in the shop here that never lived through the subsequent updates, and they were 'sposed to.

Where is the market for a DIY Mac? If I'm comfortable enough with a DIY MAC KIT, I think I would be comfortable enough to just purchase my own parts, install the necessary hardward and drivers to make it run.

Once Apple lays the final killing blow on Psystar, they'll go after all these copycats, either directly via the court system, or indirectly by making Leopard unusable on these clones.

Steve Jobs is absolutely *maniacal* when it comes to preserving the integrity of the "Apple Experience." And we can thank our lucky stars that he is, otherwise we'd be stuck with WIndows, or even worse.

Indeed. And I find it disturbing how many people on AI and other mac forums support Psystar. Short sighted dimwits spoiling it for everyone else. Too many ex PC users on the platform nowadays is my honest opinion!

count me in and happy to be a dimwit. Apple sell ridiculously overpriced hardware and anything that can bring them down to a more sensible level is a good thing. Not as if nowadays that MAc hardware is even remotely better quality than an Dell or Tosh product.

Even faster models based on Xeon hardware, nicknamed the Millennium 8, 16 and 24 for their uses of two, four, and six quad-core processors, are due in as little as 60 days. The Millennium 24 is known to have six 2.13GHz Xeon L7455 chips that trade their raw clock speed for multi-processor support.

24 cores? That's crazy, but completely useless until Snow Leopard arrives. Will this company still be trading when that happens? We shall have to wait and see....

This company announces that they have made a computer compatible with OS X and they are willing to sell you an adapter so that you can install it. They might not physically be installing it and violating copyright (although that dongle is questionable) but they're certainly encouraging it, which would be enough grounds for legal action.

Once Apple lays the final killing blow on Psystar, they'll go after all these copycats, either directly via the court system, or indirectly by making Leopard unusable on these clones.

Steve Jobs is absolutely *maniacal* when it comes to preserving the integrity of the "Apple Experience." And we can thank our lucky stars that he is, otherwise we'd be stuck with WIndows, or even worse.

Doesn't mean they won't start doing with their next hardware revision... I'll bet they do in fact.

I think they already have. Check out the new displayport adapter with it's DRM. What is to stop apple from using that chip as the key to the kingdom? No apple DRM chip, no play. The only wrench in those works, is all the legacy computers that they still support. But that means in 3 years, this problem goes away when support for older models rolls off.

I think they already have. Check out the new displayport adapter with it's DRM. What is to stop apple from using that chip as the key to the kingdom? No apple DRM chip, no play. The only wrench in those works, is all the legacy computers that they still support. But that means in 3 years, this problem goes away when support for older models rolls off.

Sheldon

Not a problem. Select "About this mac" from the apple menu. Press the "More info" there you will see the serial number (host id)

"According to [our] engineers, there is no way Apple can disable the EFi-X card without disabling their own Intel Macs," the spokesman further points out. "There is no way that Apple can disable the EFi-X card because it utilizes the same open firmware that [its] own boards use and thus would render all of [Apple's] own desktops useless as a result."

If there's anything in that Open Firmware that is Apple-specific, can't that be seen as circumventing Apple's copy protection? This smacks of DMCA violation. Like Playstation Mod chips.

24 cores? That's crazy, but completely useless until Snow Leopard arrives. Will this company still be trading when that happens? We shall have to wait and see....

Actually, they're only selling a computer that can run OSX along with any other OS of your choosing. Some linux apps can handle 24 cores now, although admitedly not very many that the general public would care about have been written with parallel processing in mind. Then again, a 24 core system probably isn't targeted at the general public.

And why are so many people clamoring for a Mac they can upgrade? You're a v. small audience in the entire computing world. Proof: the growing proportion of laptops (of which a small minority can be upgraded at all) compared to desktops that are being sold. Suck it up and accept that you'll either have to pay more for the Mac Pro (and probably won't need to ever upgrade) or get an iMac and upgrade more often.

Is the EFi-X really unstoppable? Couldn't Apple simply bring out an EFI update to all Macs that say adds some proprietary power management code that would obviously be optimized for Mac hardware and be critical to OS X functionality.

Firmware updates are optional though. A lot of people simply don't bother updating, especially in business in case something breaks.

What I find funny is that all these companies are building the same machine that a lot of people want Apple to build. People aren't going to buy an AIO because PC equivalents cost more. People aren't necessarily going to buy low end towers when a Mini is similarly priced and a fraction of the size. On the high end, the Mac Pro is very good value for money. The only reason people would buy this is to satisfy the need for a product Apple doesn't have.

These companies are focusing on this primarily because it's the biggest selling point they have - you can get a machine 85-90% the power of a high end Mac for half the price. Apple themselves can get pretty close to this by using Core 2 Quad. Dress it up as a Cube and people pay a little more for the design and form factor.

When you see a $1000 price difference, you assess whether aesthetics are all that important. $300 difference and there's no point.

People who don't want to play by the rules always ruin the fun for those of us that do. Now are we going back to proprietary firmware, product serial numbers, activation and so forth?

Yeah, this is what really pisses me off about the whole thing.

It's so nice to live in the Apple world and not have to worry about junk like that, well except for FileMaker. (shakes fist in the air and curses FileMaker)

Now these Hillbillies at Psystar and the young dudes without a clue at EFIFix are f*cking it all up. Literally the only thing they will end up doing is causing everyone a lot more problems.

They will destroy the OSX86 community and force Apple to use proper copy protection. They may even force them to stop sales of the retail product altogether and move only to upgrades sold online. What they won't do is make any money or force Apple to open up their software to other hardware, which is their stated goal.

If I lived in the same town as either of these outfits, I know who'd have paint all over their windows and potatoes stuck in their exhaust pipes in the morning, and as I say that ... I realise that there are a lot of folks out there that feel even stronger about this. I bet someone might even get physically hurt over this before it's all over. I wouldn't put it past someone to burn them down in the night people feel that strongly about it.